Tuesday, April 26, 2005

On July 26, 1775, members of the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, agreed:

That a Postmaster General be appointed for the United Colonies, who shall hold his office at Philadelphia and shall be allowed a salary of 1000 dollars per an for himself and 340 dollars per an for a secretary and Comptroller, with the power to appoint such and so many deputies as to him may seem proper and necessary.

That a line of posts be appointed under the direction of the Postmaster General from Falmouth in New England to Savannah in Georgia, with as many cross posts as he shall think fit.

This simple statement signaled the birth of the Post Office Department, the predecessor of the U.S. Postal Service and the second oldest federal department or agency of the United States.

Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General. Under him and his immediate successors, the postal system mainly carried communications between Congress and the armies.

America’s present Postal Service descends in an unbroken line from the system Franklin planned and placed in operation. History rightfully accords him major credit for establishing the basis of the system that has well served the growing and changing needs of the American people.

Monday, April 25, 2005

While he's never been a typical leading man, Crispin Glover has distinguished himself as one of the most intriguing personalities in the movie business. His unusual characters and avant-garde hobbies have inspired a cult-like following that has dubbed him both madman and genius.

The son of actor 'Bruce Glover' , Crispin Hellion Glover was born in New York City and raised in Southern California. He picked up his father's trade while still in elementary school--by age 13, he already had an agent scouting out parts. A lead in a stage production of _The Sound of Music_ (starring Florence Henderson) led to guest spots on the TV shows "Happy Days" (1974), "Hill Street Blues" (1981), and "Family Ties" (1982), which in turn led to roles in made-for-TV movies. The adolescent Glover felt "confined" by TV work, however, so he opted to stick to movie parts. He made his big-screen debut as a sex-starved teenager in My Tutor (1983), then followed up with a supporting role in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984).

Glover's most defining Hollywood moment happened the next year, when he appeared as George McFly ('Michael J. Fox' 's father) in the instant classic Back to the Future (1985). The whiny underdog character struck a chord with moviegoers, and for years Glover would be known primarily as "that guy from _Back to the Future_." Oddly enough, the actor delivered one of his favorite performances around the same time - playing a small-town kid obsessed with Olivia Newton-John in the indie The Orkly Kid (1985)--but the smaller film was completely overshadowed by his commercial success. Glover did, however, receive critical praise for his next indie role, a starring turn as a high-strung murder witness in _River's Edge (1987)_ . Excited by the chance to explore more adventurous projects, he turned down an offer to reprise McFly in Back to the Future Part II (1989). The producers brought the character back to life by splicing together archived footage and new scenes (using an actor in prosthetic makeup). Glover, who hadn't given permission for his scenes to be recycled, sued _Future_'s producer, Steven Spielberg, and won. The case prompted the Screen Actors Guild to devise new regulations about the use of actors' images.

In 1990, Glover teamed up with fellow eccentric David Lynch to play the maniacal Cousin Dell in Wild at Heart (1990). He filled the next decade with similarly quirky, peripheral roles, including a turn as Andy Warhol in The Doors (1991) and a cameo as a train fireman in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995). His small but memorable appearances in films like What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) often outshone the main action.

When he's not stealing scenes from Hollywood hotshots, Glover pours his considerable energy into other creative endeavors. He wrote his first book, 'Billow Rock', before age 18, and since then he's gone on to create a library of peculiar titles (several of which have been published through his family's Volcanic Eruptions press). Among his most famous volumes are 'Rat Catching' and 'Oak-Mot', both Victorian-era stories updated with macabre illustrations and cut-up text. In 1989 he released an album of spoken word readings and cover tunes (including a rendition of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'") entitled "The Big Problem [does not equal] the Solution. The Solution = LET IT BE."

In 1995, Glover began shooting his directorial debut, _What Is It? (2000)_ , a surreal film populated entirely by actors with Down's Syndrome. He later pulled footage from the film into a touring one-man show, "The Big Slide Show," which also incorporated snippets from his books and albums. The artist in Glover claims to be inspired by "the aesthetic of discomfort," a theme which has carried over into his public behavior. During a guest stint on David Letterman's NBC show in 1987, Glover emerged wearing a wig and platform shoes, then delivered a swift kick toward Letterman's head that prompted the producers to cut to a commercial. The actor has kept a relatively low profile over the last few years, but fans may have more wacky antics to look forward to as he slips back into the public eye. Late 2000 saw him hitting the multiplex with roles in Nurse Betty (2000) and Charlie's Angels (2000), and a handful of other Glover projects loom on the not-too-distant horizon.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

"The most famous unknown artist in New York" - this is how Grace Glueck, a New York Times reporter, characterized Ray Johnson after his collage exhibition in 1965. He was called the father of mail art, one of the first performance artists, a precursor Pop Art, and he is rarely absent from studies of fluxus. His connections extend beyond even these movements through his global postal performance, the New York Correspondence School. Despite his fame and also due to his decades long, non-stop work spiralling towards an anonymous position in the art world, even now, two years after his death the recurrent question persists, who Ray Johnson was, and what his role was in the contemporary art scene.

He was born in 1927 in Detroit, Michigan, to Finnish immigrants. A world of possibilities was opened to the gifted student when he spent three years in the liberal atmosphere of Black Mountain College, a progressive institute in North Carolina, where he studied with Joseph Albers, Robert Motherwell, Mary Callery, and Lyonel Feininger. It was Albers who influenced him the most, encouraging his development in the direction of the Bauhaus-like, elegant abstract.

But at Black Mountain he also became acquainted with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, and their influence can be seen in a freer form of expression that allows for "chance", as expounded by Cage, and that goes beyond the severe forms of the Bauhaus.

In 1948 Johnson moved to New York where he painted with intricate geometry, and where he showed with the American Abstract Artists group. He chucked abstraction only in the mid-fifties, when under the influence of Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly he started to produce the hundreds of small collages that he called moticos, which were in fact a combination of irregularly shaped ink drawings, newspaper clippings, and portraits of stars. Many people see the iconography of these collages as prophetic of the great Pop Art myths, although Johnson didn't respect the conventions of advertisement art in his compositions.

He continued working with the collage, finding enough inspiration in it for the following two decades, while at the same time this genre fertilized another domain of his activity. Johnson developed a specific kind of collage technique: first he cut a coherent image into strips and then rearranged them either using the strips as constitutive pieces or layers for new collages, or by sending them to friends and acquaintances. The idea of this alternative distribution of art work quite possibly generated the most durable invention of Johnson: the New York Correspondence School (NYCS). The Correspondence School was a more or less ironic - although not completely frivolous - denomination for the correspondence of a network that comprised artists in both loose and strong contact. Its origin, according to Johnson, stretched back to the period before Black Mountain College, when he had already begun to use the post as an artistic medium in his correspondence with his friend, Arthur Secunda. But mail art, built as a parasite of the postal system, which in return influenced its instruments and its ideology, began to exist as an autonomous form of artistic expression only at the beginning of the sixties. The characteristics of the mail art genre, its favouring communication over artistic originality are the direct influences of Johnson's personality.

The basic concept of mail art is bilateral communication in the most sincere sense of the words, why the letter carrying the personal message is at the same time an art work sent as a gift. Johnson played variations on the theme of giving. Sometimes he demanded that his partner take part in the collaborative creation with the command "Add to and return to...", resulting in a shared artwork that challenges the most carefully watched criteria of classical aesthetics: originality. Sometimes he forwarded the parcels to his correspondents through an intermediary. This third participant was sometimes an onlooker, a professional voyeur in the process, committing an infraction of privacy in communication, while another time he would play an active role in the formation of the art work.

Johnson's personality defined the policy of the mail art exhibitions as well. The exhibitions were public forums for the artists involved in the correspondences, but they differed greatly from classic exhibitions. Everybody was free to announce such an event, anybody could determine the subject, but all received work had to be shown, and the documentation of the exhibition had to be sent to all participants. The most remarkable mail art exhibitions of the NYCS were those in the Whitney Museum in 1970, and at Western Illinois University in 1974.

People put various dates to the inception of the NYCS. Mike Crane dates it from 1962, according to Johnson, it already functioned in the fifties. But the name, given by Ed Plunkett (New York Correspondence School), gained recognition only at the end of the sixties, mostly due to the increasingly regular meetings organized by Johnson. In the fifteen years between 1968 and 1983, Ray organized more than fifty meetings, heterogeneous in aspects and goals. These were usually assemblies dedicated to legendary artists and media stars (like the "Paloma Picasso Fan Club Meeting", the "Shelley Duvall Fan Club Meeting", the "Marcel Duchamp Fan Club Meeting", or the "Meeting for Anna May Wong"), but the events based on conceptualist ideas were also essential (like the "Snakes Escape", the "Stilt Walk Meeting", or the one titled "Oh Dat Consept Art"), as well as the events where nothing happened besides being together (Johnson called these "Nothings", in response to the happenings of the fluxus artists).

Though Johnson wrote a NYCS obituary for the New York Times in 1973, the school continued its activities under the names of different clubs and universities. The Buddha University and the Taoist Pop Art School were the most important among its incarnations.

In addition to his mail activity, Johnson continued to make collages, but simultaneously, he was careful to run contrary to the few exhibition forums and traditional art venues still open to his "serious art". Maybe this explains why his life work was not presented in contrast to his correspondents working in the field of Pop Art and fluxus. Johnson's public was gradually restricted to his correspondences and the meetings under the aegis of the NYCS. He retired to live in the privacy of his Locust Valley house, where he spent ten to twelve hours a day sorting the letters received and assembling his own mail. Reflections - sometimes blent with offended overtones - on contemporary art became a recurrent subject of the meetings. In his mail and phone conversations of the eighties, he was occupied with travesty, fakes, and subversion. His last important exhibition was during the mid-eighties in the Nassau County Museum of Art. As he gradually departed from the official art scene, he organized more and more Nothings, and encouraged the spread of his rumoured death. It's symbolic that one of his last possible public appearances - Michael Corbett, without Johnson's knowledge, had entered their shared work entitled "Condom Man" in the "In the Spirit of Fluxus" exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum - was disallowed through censorship. "I'm often killed", he wrote in his piece for the Uppsala Mail Art Display in 1994. In December 1994 he announced the death of bunny, the figure which had almost become his travesty.

On January 13th, 1995 he executed "the greatest performance in his life", he jumped into the water from a bridge in Sag Harbor, New York.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

His father Clyde was a pharmacist with a lung condition which required him to move wife Mary and son Marion to the warmer climate of southern California where they tried ranching near the Mojave desert. Until the ranch failed he and his younger brother Robert swam in an irrigation ditch and rode a horse to school. Next the family moved to Glendale where Marion delivered medicines for his father, sold newspapers, and had an Airedale dog named "Duke" (the source of his own nickname). He did well at school both academically and in football. When he narrowly failed admission to Annapolis he went to USC on a football scholarship 1925-7. Tom Mix got him a summer job as a prop man in exchange for football tickets. On the set he became close friends with director John Ford for whom, among others, he began doing bit parts, some billed as John Wayne. His first featured film was Men Without Women (1930). After more than 70 low-budget adventures, mostly routine, Ford cast him in Stagecoach (1939), the movie through which he emerged as a major star. He appeared in nearly 250 movies, many of epic proportions. From 1942-3 he was in a radio series, "The Three Sheets to the Wind", and in 1944 he helped found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, later becoming its President. His conservative political stance was also reflected in The Alamo (1960) which he produced, directed and starred in. His patriotic stand was enshrined in The Green Berets (1968) which he co-directed and starred in. In September 1964 he had a cancerous left lung removed; in March 1978 there was heart valve replacement surgery; and in January 1979 his stomach was removed. He received the Best Actor nomination for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and the Oscar for his role as one-eyed Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969). A Congressional Gold Medal was struck in his honor in 1979. He is perhaps best remembered for his parts in John Ford's cavalry trilogy - Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950).

Friday, April 22, 2005

Well I picked up the post office boxes this afternoon... and they are totally awsome. Each box still have the last names of the people they used to belong too. I forgot to ask the previous owner where they originally came from, but I think after I get a better look at these things i'll know wether it was a housing complex or an actual post office. I'll post a picture or two of them on here later today. Haveing people over to have a few drinks and check them out.

I was up really late last night cranking out the correspondences for the Texas show. The last day I will mail will be this coming monday. I will have a total of 16 pieces to send that are all the really super crazy works for the entire grouping of works sent. I seriously doubt that half of these will even make it out of Atlanta. But hey... the theme was to challenge the system, so I'm definitlly staying on track with that. I've got cards with metal nuts and bolts coming out of them... some with coca cola cans and lime slices attached... and a pair of flip flops... not to mention the other 10 cards. If all of mine and Barkers work actually makes it to the show, it'll be amazing.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

I know many of my correspondents are upset that I am getting these amazing post office boxes. For you... my dear friends all I have to say is...

100 Post Office Boxes are mine!!!... bhah ha ha...

But alas.... they are all of ours... today I offer a plan for these beautiful pieces. Any time any of my correspondence friends want to do a postal show... or even, lets say a Ray johnson 'Nothing' these boxes will always be available to you for whatever you need as long as the function is related to postal art.

An interesting side note that I didn't realize until I sat down and stopped thinking about everything. The previous owner of these boxes was a Mr. Johnson... I believe our 'Cult of Ray Johnson' (begun by Barker) is staring to have an effect on the things we deal with in everyday life and the work we produce. I would like us all to take a moment and remember Ray and the certain interims of him that have motivated and touched each of us.

I compel us all to take a moment to reflect on the current state of Modern Art — (pause)

I understand that not all of us follow the current trends. I heartily embrace this fact. I believe the most important movements have come to fruition in ignorance to the post... to the past. I now lay down the challenge for us to move beyond our current ideals and convictions and move toward something our children's children will idealize and act upon. I know it is possible... I have seen the great new renaissance. I have envisioned it since I was able to color with a crayon. We are sitting on the fringe my friends.

The Young British Artists only touched the far escapes of this ideal. Damien Hirst has helped to open the doors, but still as much as I admire the man and the people that work under him, he has failed on so many levels. The YBA's are now what is current... I say bull-ocks to this. There is more to explore... more to reveal.. more to disgust, disclose, disguise, declare, and divulge.

The great teacher Joseph Albers taught his students at Black Mountain — " Art is a s'vindle (swindle)". Ohh how true it is... and yet it is more than that. I think what Albers was truely teaching was the impact of modern culture on post modern arts aesthetics. A modern cataclysm of old world ideals meets the cathode ray tube. He was pushing his students. No, he was assaulting his students — trying to force them into a fight or flight response... but he was too ahead of his time. Some of his children pushed the threshold... Raushenberg - Johnson. These two geniuses pushed art to its limits, but age, old world method, and caution got the better of them. Their effort was not in vain, but the works and aesthetics they inflicted on my generation are only heard by the tired, the sick, the questioning, and the self-tutored.

The time is now... and the time is ours. The events that unfold for us over the next 20 years will either move modern art or stiffen it. I myself say fuck to it all. A grand fuck to all the lessons of the past and the present. I have read book after book to lucubrate and indoctrinate myself as have countless other for centuries. Now I want us to write our own books. I see a grand orgy of new ideas so brobdingnagian that the new renaissance will have no choice, but to be born a premature birth... left only to be nurtured an cradled until it can breath and sustain life on its own.

I see something better than a profaned golden road ahead. What I see is something untouched by man. Some have called it god, heaven or the holy ghost... I say bullshit. This is same ideal that stopped man from reaching the pinnacle we are currently at some 1000 years ago. I say what is coming is unlike anything anyone has ever written about or had the chance to taste. What is ahead is light... pure white unexpurgated light. Not god... not the devil... not the future... not our destiny... not the present... not the past... but ours.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Check out these fancy little number's I'm working on getting my hands on.

Thats right... real post office boxes. Too cool!! Don't hate me because I'm beautiful...—UPDATE:The post office boxes are mine. I will be picking them up friday at lunch time and transfering them to their new home. I'm extremly excited about the possibilities these two beauties will bring. I have all sorts of wonderful ideas for their use in our postal art gallery shows.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Finally cut lime slices and poly'd them to to only two coca-cola can correspondence for the Texas show. A can of Diet Coke with Lime and regular Cooke with Lime. letting them dry overnight. i will see what their status is in the morning. I know they will need several more coats as well as adequit time to cure before I leave their fate to the febal hands of the USPS. God speed my hand-crafted children.

Added buuble-wrap backings to the Power Ranger correspondence for the gallery show as well. Added some black striped paint to them and to another seres of cards for Barker, but I can not elaborate on those any further because Barker is a reader of this blog and gets pissed when I talk about my work (his work) before he recieves it.... understood.

Cut out three 3 x 5 pieces of matte medium that is about 1/8" thick. I plan to attach a paper strip backing and mail them to the shows before sturday as well. Saturday is the last day I will be mailing work to the show... anytime after that and it runs the risk of missing the accepatance dates... of course I'm sure the USPS will screw things up with out my knowing on several of the correspondences I've sent. I related to both Barker and Kanka over the phone tonight that I am running the chance that none of my work will be recieved at the show. the only record... if they arrive too... will be the formal letters to the curator containing color copies of the works. If this is the case, I still think I will be pleased with the out come.

Created another last minute set of correszpondences for the show as well tonight. Fpound a pair of paper thin flip-flops in the streets of Atlanta while walking home from a Braves game last weekend. I afixed paper strips to the bottoms of the shoes and will add more materials to them tomm. and thursday. The plan is to sent them Fri. or Sat. I have a feeling that I will have about 15 - 20 last minute works to se4nd to the show these days.

Corresponded via e-mail several times this week with A. Vinson about mail art and what i is all about. She sent me a beautinful card earlier this week and I've sent her an original in return. She and C. Vinson will be great correspondents in the future I just know it.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Hung out at Kankas last night. we had a few drinks and talked the talk. We decided that today we were going to head out on a road trip to North Carolina to surprise our friend on her 30th birthday. She has no idea we are going to come and has probably been bitching about us and our lack of 'do-anything-ness'. So this morning I woke up early and got some work done... cleaned myself off... packed some things into the car and headed over to pick up Kanak, where I am writing this entry right now. the trip in itself isn't a long one... only 4 hours. That time will go by really quickwith alot of good music and such.

I didn't mail any correspondences today... to busy with other nonsence. So come monday i'm gonna have a pile of mailings to go out. Ohh well... time to hit the road. I won't be able to post the blog tomm. on account of my trip. But I'll still write something as usual and post it later in the week.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

I finally finished the first drafts of the correspondence books. I've created a volume dedicated to the works I have mailed Barker, as well as a volume dedicated to the work Barker has mailed me. Each book is 8" x 12" and features well over 100 works each. All work is reproduced at actual size unless too big to fit the page, in which case there will be a fold out page to accompany the works dimensions.